More than a third of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 develop at least one persistent symptom of long COVID, according to a new analysis.
Dr Maxime Taquet of the University of Oxford, UK, and colleagues at the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre examined more than 270,000 electronic health records from the US of people recovering from COVID-19 infection. They searched for nine ‘core’ long COVID symptoms occurring 90 to 180 days after COVID was diagnosed.
Their analysis found that 37% of people had at least one long COVID symptom during this time.
The top long term symptom was anxiety/depression, occurring in 15% of individuals. Breathing problems, abdominal symptoms, or pain were diagnosed in 8% of cases, fatigue and chest/throat pain in 6%, and brain fog in 4%.
When the time period was opened to one to 180 days after infection, even higher rates were observed.
Long COVID was more likely among those with severe infection requiring hospitalisation, older individuals and women. In addition, older people and men were at higher risk of breathing and cognitive problems, but younger people and women were more likely to have headaches, abdominal symptoms and anxiety/depression.
Multiple long COVID symptoms were common and became more likely over time. The researchers also compared these rates to those in people recovering from influenza. This showed that persistent symptoms were 50% more likely after COVID than the flu.
Dr Taquet commented: "The results confirm that a significant proportion of people, of all ages, can be affected by a range of symptoms and difficulties in the six months after COVID-19 infection.
"These data complement findings from self-report surveys and show that clinicians are diagnosing patients with these symptoms. We need appropriately configured services to deal with the current and future clinical need."
Taquet, M. et al. Incidence, co-occurrence, and evolution of long-COVID features: A 6-month retrospective cohort study of 273,618 survivors of COVID-19. PLoS Medicine 29 September 2021
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